Right now, I’m at the university of michigan for camp. I’ve been here before, and it’s usually been wonderful.
But.
This time, the network/internet setup has been switched to a system wherein you must have a UofM account to get any kind of decent access. My (rather limited) understanding of it is that only port 80 is open to non-UofM accounts - basically what this results in is a rather slow internet, nigh-on impossible downloads of ANYthing, and inability to do anything else online. I realize that restricting access makes it easier for them to keep viruses and nasty things out, but for fuck’s sake, this is a fucking COMPUTER camp. Having decent access doesn’t matter so much for the sports camps (the other kinds of camps that I’ve seen here), but in general, people who come to computer camps are - get this - into computers. We might actually want to fucking USE them for more than email. Gasp! What an amazing thought! </sarcasm>
Part of (rather, a lot of) my irritation has to with the link in my sig. One of my favorite pasttimes, besides browsing around here, is hanging out on the mud. Guess what port is needed to log on? Here’s a hint: it’s not 80.
Furthermore: we had false hopes, yesterday, that upon recieving the temporary UofM accounts for the labs, that these would be good enough to use for the decent access. Apparently, it’s not.
Fuck whoever thought of this. You should be beaten about the head with a monitor. Wait, that’s a waste of a good monitor.
~ponders getting the broken one mailed here from home~ Evil thoughts, evil thoughts…
Being in exactly their shoes at another Big Ten university I say kudos. There are thousands of kids who “don’t quite get networks” and just want to “hang out on the mud”, etc, etc, etc. You know what? They are the reason Michigan has restricted that access, people who flood the network with worms, viruses, portscans, spambots, and the rest because they just want to do what they want to do, without realizing they’re in a public sphere with responsibilities.
Instead of spending energy being mad at them, spend your energy learning how not to be a jackass and destroy the network, and then go teach five other people the same thing.
If you have an interest in computers, which obviously you do, how about being productive about? Start thinking about and working on solutions, ways that the computer itself could be made more sane for the average joe so that they wouldn’t be forced to worry so much about stuff like this.
Personally I don’t know that it can be done–I’m afraid people may be too stupid–but we should have some young idealistic folks giving it a shot.
He could give it a try, but I just requested one and the list of available services doesn’t seem to include any sort of network access.
This would be considered the “right” way to do things; if you’re bothering to restrict network access then you won’t set up a back door. At UMN you’re required to be “sponsored” for an account. Camps like the one the OP are attending coordinate with us, generally, to get logins for their registrants (this involves the coordinator of said camp taking responsiblity for said registrants’ identities and activities–ie, if someone does something bad, the co-ordinator agrees that they can effectively point us towards that person). The IT/central tech support depts of the Big Ten universities meet (iirc) quarterly to share ideas and implementation experiences, and tend to borrow heavily from each other–it appears that UMich has implemented this idea themselves:
All you Michigan haters - as a recent Mich grade, I stick my tongue out at all of you. As for the OP, does the speed restrictions prevent you from doing whatever it is you’re doing at computer camp? If not, then though it may suck, what they’re doing is perfectly reasonable. Where are you at, anyway? North campus? Unless they’ve replace them in the past year, half of the computers are pretty crappy to begin with. Get to the EECS labs and use some of their machines.
coleridge78 - I understand what you’re saying, entirely, but what they’re doing is actually detrimental to the camp itself - several counselers need to be able to access the net without these restrictions in order to teach these classes. The counselers, mind, not the campers (who could still be ignorant enough to have virii and etc floating around). I wouldn’t mind so much if they just let them on, but not even that. That just baffles me.
I’m not sure about the sponsored accounts, but I’ll see if I can find out.
Well, unfortunately the camp is here. And they don’t seem to want to move because one CIT wants them to.
I’m curious about whether they haven’t been “allowed”, or whether nobody got around to asking and going through the appropriate channels before the camp started. That happens, literally, almost constantly through the summer over here. People that set these things up aren’t necessarily familiar with everything they should be familiar with beforehand… also, fwiw, we see plenty of tech-types (like your counselors), who should know better, compromising the network. Education and experience don’t always translate into being on top of things. Even the best have a bad day now and then.
Yep. That’s definitely the thing to do. Good luck.
~smacks herself in the head~ I forgot to mention, the head of the camp has tried to go through the appropiate channels, and has informed us all of what’s going on, which is how I know why this whole situation exists. So yes, they definitely have not been allowed.
Ah, interesting. I’d be curious to know the background, as someone who handles similar situations. Know what their reasoning is. At any rate, again, good luck with finding a solution…
For some reason my first thought was that they’re encouraging the more ahem creative of you to find weaknesses in the system/personal and hack your way in.
At last, we will have full access, beginning the middle of next week. At the beginning of the second session (week after next), the counselers are going to go around and put antivirus and antispyware programs on each person’s computer. This will happen BEFORE they’re allowed to have an IP address.
Furthermore, anyone who gets a virus/worm/etc that then spreads onto the network will lose their Internet access.
In other words, it’s exactly the way it was last year.
